They went on again, mile after mile, and whenever he glanced at her, her face was still alight with happiness, and unconscious smiles rippled over it in tune with her thoughts. So inborn and unfailing is the mother-feeling in all true women. "Now, if you wish to bathe, here is a good place. I will strike across to the other shore and will come back in about an hour. Don't go too far out!" and he strode away across the hummocks. Under cover of the nearest sandhill she loosed her slender garments, and sped like a sunbeam across the beach and into the water; and her face, as it came up from the kiss of the sea, was like a sweet blush-rose all beaded with morning dew, than which no fairer thing will you find. And as she swam and dived and splashed in the lucent green water, like a lovely white seal, her bodily enjoyment and her mental exhilaration flung wide her arms at times, as though she would clasp all Nature's joys to her white breast, and her eyes shone with a brighter light than had the mother-seal's, and a seal's eyes are deeply, beautifully tender and bright. She laughed aloud at times, though none but herself could hear it, in the pure physical joy of living and being so very much alive. She was happier than she had ever been in all her life before. And one time, as she lay afloat with her arms outspread, she looked up at the pale sun in the thin gray sky, and all inconsequently said, "Yes--he is good. He is good. He is good," and her face was golden-rosier than ever when she was conscious that she had said it aloud. She was sitting in the side of the sandhill, combing her hair with her fingers, when she heard his distant hail. And she climbed the hill and waved to him that he might come. "I don't need to ask if you enjoyed your bathe," he said, as he came up. "I can see it in your face." "It was delightful. I would like to bathe every day." "Two days ago?" he laughed. "No, days like this. Oh, it _was_ so good! And now I am hungry. Let us eat." So they sat in the wire grass of the hill-top and ate their frugal meal, she with her wonderful hair all astream, the ends spread wide to dry on the sand; and he, clean, and strong, and brown, as fine a figure of a man as she had ever met, though his raiment was nothing to boast of. And he said to himself, "She is the most wonderful girl I have ever seen. I would like to kiss her hair, her hands, her feet." And she, to herself,--"He is good. He is good. He is good." And, buried deep in both their minds, yet fully alive, was the thought that it might be that all their lives would have to be passed on that lean bank of sand--together. XL On their way back, Wulf lingered behind for a moment or two and came along presently with rabbits enough for their requirements, but did not obtrude them on her notice. "It has been a day of delight," she said, as they drew to their ship. "Let us do it again.... I wonder if that man has got home."